December
by PenguinSnuggles
Summary: Norma Gordon left fifteen years ago, a month before the first downfall of Lord Voldemort, but now she's back and is Norma Gordon-Farris now. Why does she hate Severus Snape? Rated T for abusive language ONLY. Part of a series - unnamed, at the moment.
1. Prologue

Short note: Just because I could, I made the year that this happens 2010. So; 2010 = 1995. The rest of the math comes along with itself. Recent year = year it _actually_ happened + 15. There's no real reason, I just wanted to. _Pwetty please_, no, "Why did you change the year?" comments.

Prologue

S—N

The year of Lily and James Potter's deaths.

The small stack of papers in front of Dumbledore made his eyes blurry. He took off his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes hard, wishing away the small amount of salt water building there, and for some more ounces of energy.

Either way, it had to get done.

He checked the clock. Severus was still at a Death Eater meeting.

The old man reflected, successfully ignoring his papers, and wondered briefly why the young man had decided to tell him that today. This morning, at nearly six-thirty, long before classes started, Severus had come in through the floo and told him gasping for breath, "Dumbledore. I-I'm sure you already know, but I have to tell you. I've become a Death Eater. There's a meeting tonight. I've told them of the prophecy, that either Lily's son or the Longbottom's is to defeat him. I told him, but. . .but. . . Dumbledore."

Albus was so shocked, that for two minutes he merely looked at Severus, not talking, with his mouth open.

"S-sit down, Severus," Albus told his professor, pointing towards an armchair in front of the Headmaster's desk. The gesture and his own internal magic made it slide out a few inches.

Severus had come in so keyed up, but after sitting down he slouched, feeling drained. The headmaster looked after him, concerned. Despite the news, and despite the fact that Albus had known what the poor, young man had become weeks before, Albus was concerned about Severus' well being. He'd been a good student, and an interesting one at that. Always kept the old man on his toes.

As hard as he'd tried, Severus still became one of Voldemort's followers. As he rested in his chair, Albus took a moment to grieve. He was in mourning for Severus' loss of innocence. It hadn't been that long, but the Headmaster was sure Severus had seen things that _no one_ should see.

Albus looked up, and was then staring into Severus' almost black eyes. He had a dark moment – the man had told Voldemort about the prophecy. The sly boy, Albus realized that he hadn't ever known anyone had eavesdropped.

And now the evil wizard of this lifetime knew of Sibyl's rare occurrence of clairvoyance. Millions of questions fell on Albus' tongue: _Does he feel threatened? Will he try to do anything about it soon? Who will he attack first? The Potters or the Longbottoms, little Neville and his aging grandmother?_

He stayed quiet.

Severus took a deep breath, before he said, "I have to start preparing for class."

The young man had started teaching that past year. Albus took a risk inviting him onto the staff after Slughorn went into hiding. Despite that, Severus was a good teacher, and a great potioneer.

Albus took a deep breath, as well, before he said, "Very well. Come see me, Severus, after your meeting. I'd like for you to tell me exactly what you're going to do about this."

Severus looked deep into the old man's eyes. The blue orbs appeared like they could stare into his soul, which chilled him deep inside, but Severus wondered if they were rather like intense windows. Startling at first, but could he see inside them to who Dumbledore was?

The young man nodded, and was off.

Dumbledore had received an owl with a short message of "I'll be leaving for several hours." It told him that Severus was off to see his new Master, and Severus had not come back from it yet.

_Or, _thought the Headmaster, _he's decided to not stop by, like I asked_.

Then, another, less expected visitor nearly slammed open his office door.

He was taken out of his reverie, to stare at the young girl he hadn't seen in a week. She'd been at the last Order meeting, sitting in the back with "Mad-Eye" Moody (as Potter and his friends had taken to calling him), smiling and talking, but holding something back.

The older part of him that seemed to tell him things through his magic, had explained that she was hiding something. It wasn't dangerous, it told him, but she did have a secret.

He hoped it wasn't making her unsteady. She was a great fighter, and knew more about this war than many in the Order.

Norma Gordon looked unsteady, though. She kept a firm hand on her stomach, caressing it, and Dumbledore knew. She was with child – the look in her eyes, oh, he should have known. Order meetings were usually held at the house of Molly and Arthur Weasley, two good friends of Norma's, and when she greeted her little nephews, Dumbledore had thought she seemed more maternal.

At the time, the Headmaster had only hoped it was a sign she was softening up. Norma could be a little brute at times, something Moody liked about the young woman.

"Miss Gordon?" Dumbledore said, point towards the seat where Severus had sat, the chair was still out. The young woman sat down, and ran a hand through her short hair. It stuck up with the movement, and then fell back down to frame her face shortly after.

"Professor Dumbledore," she said in greeting, "I don't have much time, I'm going to be quick. I'm pregnant."

Dumbledore studied the silence. He didn't say a word, but nodded.

Norma had no problem simply going on. "I'm going to be leaving." Dumbledore was slightly shocked, and moved to protest. He was surprised then, as Norma's unwavering look stopped him, along with a long slim finger. "No. I'm leaving. There's more to this than just a young woman getting pregnant. The father doesn't want it. I'm left not only with no husbandly-protection, but really, with more danger than if I was just simply another single mother. I'm leaving," she repeated.

She lifted up her legs and sat, one leg as if she was going to meditate, and the other pulled up close to her chest. Her ankle kept the one she wasn't holding from slipping off the chair. Dumbledore almost snorted at her brass actions. Then again, she did the same thing as a student – when she wasn't wearing the uniform skirt, of course.

Dumbledore thought on the way she spoke. Why did it sound as if she was his age (and his age was nothing to want to be)? Her voice was too weary. He'd thought, when she entered Hogwarts at the age of eleven, that her soul was already an old one. Did she have to grow so much now, too? Shouldn't she get the chance to be young?

"Really, now?" Dumbledore said, finally. The silence had been numbing.

Norma sent him a tired smile, and he knew it was final. "Yes. No one will know where I'm going," _Not even you,_ "but I'd like for you to tell everyone not to look for me, and that I'm fine. I know it's a lot."

She didn't say anything more about it after that.

Instead, she proceeded to give her usual Order reports, telling him what she usually would at the next Order meeting, that was to be tomorrow night. Her next words confirmed his thoughts.

"I'm leaving, now. I wont be at the Weasley's tomorrow." Sadness shone through her eyes with abandon. Dumbledore was shaken.

She adjusted a small bad that wrapped around her torso that he hadn't seen before, and then disapparated, leaving Dumbledore sad, but amused that she'd known Apparition could be done out of the Headmaster's office.


	2. As I Look Up Into the Stars and Grieve

Chapter One

S—N

Months before now.

Norma Gordon-Farris looked at the Daily Prophet in front of her, and laughed. Mrs. Shelley, the witch down the street in Arizona, U.S.A., had taken out a coupon, next to the rather useless one for Beaver's Famous Potato Growing Potion for Desperate Soil, and had also written down the date and time that her son was to visit from Turkey next.

"I should probably write this done and give it to Mrs. Shelley the next time I see her," she told her husband Dave. He snorted, and, after drinking some coffee, said, "Yea, wow."

It was the middle of the day and the couple sat in their living room with the television going, showing "Ghost Whisperer," or something, as they ate their lunch. Their children were all gone, doing whatever with their friends.

After a while, Norma read more of the Prophet. She chewed her lip, and Dave started to pay attention, too.

"What's going on, honey?" he asked his wife. After a moment, he dove. "I know somethings been making you worry. You're acting a lot like you did when we first met. I remember it, you know. It took you two years, living with me and the kids, to finally stop warding our house, or to put the twins in another room."

Norma looked up, and then gave a sigh. She was pulled into David's arms. He chuckled, and pulled her close. He was a dark, half black half Puerto Rican man who had been crazy enough to take her in when he found her trying to make ends meet, pregnant, in Phoenix. He taught English at the local high school, where Jordan and Winifred, her fifteen-year-old twins, attended.

Her twins thought that was horrible, while her beautiful ten-year-old daughter thought it was the best thing in the world.

Little Robin Farris had a strange mixture of her father's black skin and her mother's olive skin. It seemed to glow, but still contrasted with her bright blue eyes – her mother's. Her hair, though, was a dark brown. Throughout it, her mother's lighter (if only by a couple shades, really) hair came through, too. It was put into at least a hundred small braids. In the picture on the mantel from her last year at school, Robin's hair was pulled back halfway.

Thinking, Norma stared at the smiling picture of her daughter, and wondered how she was going to deal if things escalated like they had, fifteen years before.

"Do you remember when I talked to you about Voldemort?" Norma asked her husband. She'd long since gotten over her fear of the name. Before, she'd thought Dumbledore crazy for calling He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, Lord Voldemort.

"Yea. I remember how he was supposedly vanquished, or you thought he just went into hiding, when he tried to kill Harry Potter. About the Order."

He listed some things he remembered his wife talking about. After fifteen years, he was well read in the world of magic, and he'd listened to all his wife had to tell him. As a teacher, seeing her do magic had made him almost pass out. The world was interesting. Not as interesting as his Norma was, though.

Norma showed him the Prophet. "That's the sixth person to die since the beginning of this year. There are at least ten people 'missing', and honey, in the Wizarding World there really isn't such as thing as 'missing'. Some of them are people I used to know, from the Order. I may be paranoid, but I knew the war inside and out, better than anybody except maybe Dumbledore. I know that Voldemort's coming back."

David tensed. He'd seen her clean with magic, and had spent countless nights imagining the horrors she talked about – to him, and in her dreams. Magic could be beautiful, and at the same time unimaginably horrible. It occurred to him that his wife's fears could be something more, so he pressed.

"Honey, I know you're thinking about something else, too. What is it? Please, tell me."

Norma sighed, and leaned into her husband's comfort.

"We'll have to tell the kids that they can't go anywhere else for the rest of the summer. They should even go out side a little less. Things are going to be dangerous, very dangerous, if Voldemort's back. He killed so many people, baby, so many." Norma dissolved into tears, "He killed my babies' grandparents."

David's dad had been long gone when he was seven, and his mother had died of cancer three years back, but he knew she was talking about her parents – and she never did, usually.

Her English accent came out more, as she got more emotional.

"I think, I think that we should pack. I'll keep a bang, a little one that can hold a ton but be small and light, and we should tell the kids to just be ready for a quick evacuation. I don't want anyone to be too worried, though, especially not Robin. I want you to know, though, honey, that I was a big. . . pain in the butt, during the war. I was muggleborn. I made muggleborn friends. They killed my parents while I was still in school, and then when I was young I got into the Order. No one else my age did. It was allowed, but I gotten Dumbledore to back down."

David had been told this before, but kept quiet, and listened. It was important – in general, and to her.

"I tried my best to keep knocking him down, foiling his plans. I worked personally with Dumbledore on a lot of things. I helped anyone I could, and took a lot of people in. I had my own apartment by the time I was seventeen. I did a _lot_ of damage and every month he tried to kill me. I wasn't safe a lot of the time, and I'm not completely vanished from the wizarding world. If he decides that I'm not dead, and that he wants to get me now that he's back, he could find me, easy. Especially if he has the kind of hold on the government I think he does."

Norma took a breath.

It was silent for only a moment, before David said, "Alright. The kids are out, now, let's go pack, shall we?"

They didn't pack right away – they took an hour to lay in each other's arms. David only spilled one tear, while Norma let her self go, feeling free and yet so terrified with her husband beside her.

S—N

Now, a month before September 1st.

A late night, laying on a large couch with her kids and her husband by her side, and very suddenly turned horrific.

Death Eaters had come for her. She'd thought she had time, good Lord, she hadn't even contacted Dumbledore yet, as she had planned. No one could materialize in her home, but her front door had been blasted off it's hinges.

Robin was yanked closer to her, her twins were shoved, and too late Norma realized that David was no where near her.

For a fleeting moment, their eyes, met, and she let out a, "No," without thinking. Her husband screamed, loud and horrible sounding, "Get away from my wife!" Then, no eyes were on her. Death Eater's wands were focused on the wild Muggle screaming.

David quickly tossed the bag, as someone yelled, "Avada Kedavra," while David screamed, "I love you," and Norma clutched her children close, saying, "Everyone hold hands."

David died. Jordan caught the bag. Winifred held onto her twin's hand, and Robin's. Robin held close to her mother.

Then, the four Farris' were gone.

They landed outside, somewhere green and windy that no one but Norma recognized. Jordan and Winifred caught their mother, despite their nauseousness, as she sank to the ground shaking. "David, oh my David," she said. She was openly grieving, and easily took her babies into her arms. Jordan and Fred suddenly understood what had happened. Robin attracted attention, and snapped her mother out of her reverie. Norma was strong.

The woman looked at her three babies and knew, then, that despite her mourning she had children to look after. Robin, the poor girl, looked sick. She took her tiniest one into her arms, and helped her just in time as she got sick on the long grass. "Oh, my baby," Norma murmured. Easily, with strength Jordan hadn't seen from his mother, Norma brought her scrawny daughter into her arms and lifted her up. She easily cleaned off her mouth with an old tissue out of her jeans pocket, that was left on the ground.

Slowly, they made their way up the hill, and towards a rickety old house, on the Scottish countryside.


End file.
